Photo of the Week: Rosetta spacecraft finds building blocks of life on comet
Ingredients thought to be the building blocks of life have been found on a comet by the Rosetta spacecraft.
Rosetta detected the amino acid glycine, along with the essential element phosphorus in the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta has been orbiting the comet since 2014.
The discovery of those building blocks around a comet supports the idea that comets could have played an essential role in the development of life on early Earth, according to researchers at the University of Bern in Switzerland, the principal investigator for the Rosetta mission's ROSINA instrument.